Fallout 4 mod showcase part 2: tweak the visuals

03 February 2016

By Tancrid "Tank" Muller

Hello and welcome to part two of me trying to convince you to mod the crap out of your copy of Fallout 4. If you haven’t already, you should probably check out part one right here, where the word of the day is immersion. And if you’re new to modding, you may want to give this page a look-see.

In this episode, we’ll be looking at a handful of mods that’ll alter the look of the game, make it a bit more aesthetically pleasing, and one that may even make your game run a little smoother. Are all of them lore-friendly, immersive, and incapable of melting your graphics card? Haha, no. But who cares!? Preeetty!

Vivid Fallout (by Hein84)

Vivid Fallout is a collection of mods that aim to make most of the game’s textures look sharper – and in my opinion, a whole lot better. The mods even claim to be less GPU-intensive than the vanilla textures, so even if the visual changes the mod makes don’t tickle your fancy, you should still consider installing it purely for those precious few extra frames per second.

Fallout 4 without Vivid Fallout (medium-ish settings)

Fallout 4 with Vivid Fallout (medium-ish settings)

If not for the side-by-side comparison above (which took WAY longer to achieve than I thought it would), you probably wouldn’t really notice a huge difference in visual fidelity while playing, but during those brief moments where you stop and take it all in, you’ll be glad you installed Vivid Fallout.

Here’s a list of the Vivid Fallout mods you’ll need to install for best results:

Enhanced Wasteland Preset (by Razed)

Out of the sweet visual effects mods I’ve tried out, Enhanced Wasteland Preset is by far the most impressive. It changes a few settings here and there, tweaks the visuals to look a little less dull and faded, and uses what I assume is some sort of technical wizardry to deliver a more vibrant and colourful Fallout 4 world. Just look at it!

While I personally feel that the mod makes the game look a whole lot better, I can also see why some people won’t find it to their taste, as it does take away some of the classic Fallout look and feel. Oh, and unless you have a boss PC, you can expect a fairly substantial FPS drop. After installing Enhanced Wasteland Preset, I saw an average drop of about five frames per second (depending on location). I’m still deciding whether I should take the FPS hit or just tone down my settings, because after going EWP you never go back.

Green it up!

Here’s where we get a little rebellious. Yes, “The Great War” pretty much completely screwed over most of the natural world (and everything else for that matter), but does that mean we can’t have lush forests and picturesque green landscapes? Well yes. That’s exactly what it means. But hey, if you can look past the fact that it’s not lore-friendly and makes as much sense as eating an entire bucket of KFC while watching The Biggest Loser, then you could experience playing a Fallout 4 that looks like this:

And let’s be realistic here, after about 210 years, nature would definitely stop being lazy and rejuvenate itself a little, right? Right? Ri…?

There are three mods you’ll need to pick up in order to live in forest Fallout. First up is Touch of Green (by Stephanie Young), which adds a lot more than just a “touch” of green to the wasteland. It makes plants, grass and a bunch of other things look a lot less depressingly dead. The second mod is “All tree have leaves” (by Ciprriano). Don’t let the unfortunate name fool you – this mod is pretty great, and does exactly what it says: it adds leaves to the barren branches of trees. The third mod works alongside the previous two. A Little Bit of Green (by dragonalex155) tones down some of the green that comes with the previous mods and makes everything look far more natural. All three mods will cause a loss in performance, so play around with one or more installed in different combinations to minimise the frame rate hit.

Fancier Pip-Boy and stars, overhauled

Here we have two mods (by Gorgulla) that you probably don’t think you need, but you’re wrong. The first mod, Fallout Texture Overhaul PipBoy, brings the magic of 2K and 4K resolutions to the humble Pip-Boy. Which admittedly doesn’t sound all that amazing, but along with the resolution boost comes a whole lot more detail and textures that make the good ol’ Pip-Boy stand out a hell of a lot more. The buttons, knobs, instruments and even the screws look more realistic, and make the entire device look less like it could have come from a cereal box.

The second mod takes what the first one does for the Pip-Boy and does the same for the stars. Fallout Texture Overhaul Stars lets you choose your favourite brand of high-res stars, and Dogmeat’s your uncle – you’ve got superbly shiny, ultra HD, mega star-ified stars. Just be warned, the dynamic glimmering “when moving around” can be a little jarring at first, and your eyes might not like it one bit.

These are all the tweaks I deem worthy of part two of this crazy trip down modding lane. If you’re feeling talkative, let me know in the comments below if your favourite visual mod didn’t make it on the list, and I’ll apologise profusely.

Oh, and I know I said there may possibly be nakedness in part two, but I’m going to have to give that a rain-check. DEFINITELY in part three though, so stick around!

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